Twisted Bacteria

Pandemic planning, Dilbert style

noreply@blogger.com (César Sánchez) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:50:00 +0000

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Infectious: Stay Away

noreply@blogger.com (César Sánchez) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 17:11:00 +0000

"Infectious: Stay Away" is an exhibition at the Science Gallery, Dublin. From the official page: THE INFECTION HAS TAKEN HOLD. Nearly 30,000 individuals have already been exposed to the INFECTIOUS exhibition in the Science Gallery. If you are brave enough to enter the containment zone on Pearse Street you are advised to wear protective clothing. INFECTIOUS is a major new exhibition exploring mechanisms of contagion and strategies of containment through science and art including a live epidemic simulation, an opportunity to have your DNA swabbed from your cheek and analysed and to get up close...

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Social media for scientists

noreply@blogger.com (César Sánchez) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 17:31:00 +0000

The following slidecast (that is, a slideshow including audio) is an excellent presentation by Mary Canady and William Gunn on social media for scientists. Topics covered: LinkedIn, Twitter, social bookmarking (delicious, citeulike, Mendeley), FriendFeed, science blogs. If you are a scientist and you think social media is completely useless for you as a researcher... well, you are wrong and must watch this! Social Media for ScientistsView more OpenOffice presentations from Mary Canady. (Found via Twitter)

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Microbiology on Twitter?

noreply@blogger.com (César Sánchez) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 08:56:00 +0000

Just for fun, I searched Twitter using some microbial-related terms (not many, as the query cannot be more than 140 characters long!). I have added an RSS feed for this query to the side bar on this blog. Is Twitter useful for scientists or for science educators? For some, it seems to be. Will Twitter (or a similar tool) be of general use among scientists in a near future? Perhaps. As a new user, I know very little about Twitter. But interesting things are happening there. I just find difficult to make sense out of most of them... But I´ll keep trying. And you should, too. On Twitter,...

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Twisted Bacteria welcomes lazy bloggers

noreply@blogger.com (César Sánchez) — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 14:17:00 +0000

Would you enjoy writing about the wonderful world of microbes but are too lazy (or busy) to start your own science blog? Well, then you might find more convenient to publish a post as a guest blogger in Twisted Bacteria. Anybody is welcome - researchers, students, or just 'normal people' who enjoy reading and writing about science. Anything related to microbes may qualify for a post at Twisted Bacteria - from hard science (such as a recent research finding that you find amazing) to science fiction, medicine, gardening, or food. Microbes are a part of our everyday life. If you are...

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Encyclopedia of Life Sciences

noreply@blogger.com (César Sánchez) — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 16:32:00 +0000

The Encyclopedia of Life Sciences (Wiley) contains more than 4,300 articles. At the time of writing this, over 50 articles were freely available as sample content. A few examples of freebies: Antibiotic resistance plasmids in bacteriaBacterial transcription regulationBioinformaticsDideoxy sequencing of DNADNA chips and microarraysDNA cloningElectrophoresis and blotting of DNAEscherichia coli lactose operonExperimental organisms used in geneticsMicroorganisms: applications in molecular biologyPolymerase Chain Reaction (PCR)

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Gene transfer in bacterial arm races

noreply@blogger.com (César Sánchez) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:06:00 +0000

The following videos are two short documentaries made by students in the MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing. Both films refer to a recent discovery of new antibiotics by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Florida. But, please, don't say: "bah, another antibiotic discovering, so boring". What makes this an interesting story is not the particular antibiotics themselves (we'll see if they ever become useful), but the way they were discovered. Or should we say "created"? It's been known for some time that the genomes of many microbes contain genes...

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A new way to make polyketides

noreply@blogger.com (César Sánchez) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 06:35:00 +0000

Polyketides are a class of natural products isolated from microbes, plants and invertebrates which includes an impressive number of clinically effective drugs with diverse activities. To name a few examples: erythromycin (antibiotic), rapamycin (immunosuppressive), amphotericin (antifungal), avermectin (antiparasitic), and doxorubicin (anticancer). As other natural products do, polyketides may play disparate roles in the producing organisms, from defensive weapons (inhibiting growth of competitors, or acting against predators) to signaling molecules (working as messengers between social...

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An 'open source' approach to drug discovery

noreply@blogger.com (César Sánchez) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:50:00 +0000

Why should we worry about intellectual property protection for infectious diseases and diseases of the poor? Why can't we share our ideas and brains to create an open source platform for drugs for these diseases in the same way that the human genome has been sequenced and the Internet developed?These are some questions posed by geneticist Samir Brahmachari in an interview published at SciDev.net. It makes an interesting reading. Samir Brahmachari is the director general of India's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), a network of 38 government laboratories. He is starting an...

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Why don't plants have any chlamydial symbionts?

noreply@blogger.com (César Sánchez) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:42:00 +0000

It seems that all known chlamydiae are obligate intracellular symbionts -- they can only reproduce inside eukaryotic cells, and remain metabolically inactive outside of their hosts (a virus-like lifestyle). Chlamydiae can infect different kinds of animals (mammals, birds, fishes, arthropods, crustaceans) and unicellular eukaryotes (such as environmental amoebae). Remarkably, chlamydiae have never been found in plants or in other plastid-containing organisms (red and green algae, plants and glaucophytes, together known as Plantae or Archaeplastida). On the other hand, as I have explained in a...

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Relaxing at the microscope

noreply@blogger.com (César Sánchez) — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 14:38:00 +0000

A video from YouTube (Microorganism Spacial Journey) showing microscopic images of microbes and other tiny beasts, accompanied by a very relaxing music.

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A cell potpourri: eukaryotes and their organelles

noreply@blogger.com (César Sánchez) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 04:57:00 +0000

According to the endosymbiotic theory, eukaryotic organelles (mitochondria, chloroplasts) are the remains of certain bacteria that established intimate associations with eukaryote ancestors. This theory is widely supported by biochemical, genetic and proteomic evidences. A take-home message may be: a bacterium became an endosymbiont, then degenerated, and voilà, turned into an organelle. But that's an oversimplification. A full story should include an active participation of the host, some horizontal gene transfer from different microbial sources and, most likely, the involvement of other...

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Martian microbes: remember we are friends

noreply@blogger.com (César Sánchez) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 10:57:00 +0000

I have always been a huge fan of life at the cellular level... (Hat tip: The Tree of Life)

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Merck halts natural products research

noreply@blogger.com (César Sánchez) — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:09:00 +0000

Bad news: Merck has decided to close down its natural product research facilities. This means the end of CIBE (Centro de Investigación Básica de España) — or Spanish Center for Biological Research — located in Madrid, Spain. Since its creation in 1954, this center has been dedicated to the discovery of new compounds of therapeutical potential produced by microbes. These efforts led to the development of several useful medicines, including antibiotics (fosfomycin, cefoxitin, thienamycin), cholesterol-lowering drugs (lovastatin), and antifungal agents (caspofungin). In May 2006, Merck...

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EcoliHub: all together now

noreply@blogger.com (César Sánchez) — Thu, 29 May 2008 10:26:00 +0000

EcoliHub is a website sponsored by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, trying to bring together researchers interested in Escherichia coli with the most up-to-date information and data. From the EcoliHub site: Sixty years of study have made Escherichia coli the most deeply understood organism at the molecular level. Much of what we know about cellular processes can be traced to fundamental discoveries in E. coli. In spite of its great importance as a model organism, information about E. coli is distributed among many online resources. EcoliHub uses web services to make seamless...

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Immune Atack, a video game

noreply@blogger.com (César Sánchez) — Mon, 26 May 2008 19:04:00 +0000

From the official Immune Attack website: "The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) presents Immune Attack™, an educational video game that introduces basic concepts of human immunology to high school and entry-level college students. Designed as a supplemental learning tool, Immune Attack aims to excite students about the subject, while also illuminating general principles and detailed concepts of immunology." (I can't help thinking of Fantastic Voyage...) Related links: Fixing The Education Digital Disconnect One Video Game At A Time: FAS Launches Immune Attack. ScienceDaily (May 26,...

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To sporulate or not to sporulate

noreply@blogger.com (César Sánchez) — Tue, 20 May 2008 12:05:00 +0000

When nutrients are scarce, Bacillus subtilis cells are able to form highly resistant endospores. However, even in a clonal population, only some cells engage in the sporulation process. This is explained in terms of a bet-hedging strategy: a mixed population composed of both vegetative cells and spores is prepared for a variety of unknown future environments. But how does an individual cell determine its own fate? In a recent report, J. W. Veening et al. showed that the decision (to sporulate or not to sporulate) is not taken by the cell itself ― it is determined a few generations earlier,...

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Paul Ewald: Can we domesticate germs?

noreply@blogger.com (César Sánchez) — Mon, 19 May 2008 19:50:00 +0000

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a group of conferences that "brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes)." The following video corresponds to a talk by Paul Ewald, director of the program in Evolutionary Medicine at the Biology Department of the University of Louisville; he has written popular news articles, academic papers, and two books. In his conference, Ewald reasons that, for the control of infectious diseases, alternative strategies should be privileged over the never-ending development...

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Neglected diseases in the news

noreply@blogger.com (César Sánchez) — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:25:00 +0000

The so-called neglected diseases comprise a number of parasitic and bacterial infections which are the most common afflictions of humankind. So, how can these diseases be "neglected"? When you get sick, you don't ignore your illness, do you? But we all can ignore a disease... as long as we ourselves don't suffer it. Neglected diseases are especially endemic in low-income populations in developing regions of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. They mostly affect the poorest people, living in remote rural areas, urban slums or conflict zones. In the meantime, the rest of humankind just "neglect"...

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Big bacteria with lots of DNA

noreply@blogger.com (César Sánchez) — Fri, 09 May 2008 12:08:00 +0000

Size matters. That's why there are no insects as big as horses [*], or bacteria as large as to be seen without the use of a microscope. Well, actually, the latter is not true —although a typical bacterial cell is not longer than 5 micrometers, a few species such as Thiomargarita namibiensis (left image) and Epulopiscium fishelsoni may reach a length of over 0.5 millimeters (500 micrometers); enough to become visible to the naked eye. Big bacteria enjoy some advantages; for instance, they can not be swallowed by most predators (such as ciliates) that feed on smaller cells. But they also...

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Charlton Heston: the connection

noreply@blogger.com (César Sánchez) — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:10:00 +0000

Now I am explaining the connection between Charlton Heston and actinomycetes. It is indeed a very simple link, as you will see. As a boy, Charlton Heston was not Charlton Heston —not yet— but John Charles Heston and, under this name, he attended New Trier High School at Winnetka, a northern suburb of Chicago. There he might have met some students who later became famous, such as actor Rock Hudson (then still known as Roy Harold Scherer, Jr. [*]) and Nobel laureate Jack Steinberg (a physicist, donated his Nobel medal to New Trier High School). However, perhaps the three boys never met,...

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Charlton Heston

noreply@blogger.com (César Sánchez) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:00:00 +0000

A great actor, Charlton Heston, died on April 5th, 2008. Can you find the connection between Heston and actinomycetes? (Please leave your answer as a comment to this post. I will do the same). Charlton Heston's image from Poletti. Image credits for actinomycetes: CDC/Dr. David Berd (PHIL #3078), 1972. From the CDC Public Health Image Library, via Wikimedia Commons.

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World TB Day

noreply@blogger.com (César Sánchez) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:50:00 +0000

From WHO - A world free of TB (WHO = World Health Organization, TB = tuberculosis): "Tuberculosis is an airborne infectious disease that is preventable and curable. People ill with TB bacteria in their lungs can infect others when they cough. An estimated 1.5 million people died from TB in 2006. In addition, another 200,000 people with HIV died from HIV-associated TB. If TB disease is detected early and fully treated, people with the disease quickly become non-infectious and eventually cured. Multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), HIV-associated TB, and...

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Too many techniques, too little time

noreply@blogger.com (César Sánchez) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:05:00 +0000

Are you overwhelmed by the progress in biological techniques? Have you recently read about some interesting research but could not follow the basic details of a technical procedure? Are you breathing? In case you do want to understand a little bit more about those ... techniques, you can try this collection of articles: Evaluating Techniques in Biomedical Research (Dec. 2007) (All articles are freely available) Topics: 3D structure determination by electron microscopy, X-ray crystal structures, proteomics, two-hybrid experiments, DNA microarrays, chromatin immunoprecipitation, RNA...

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Women scientists, sixty years ago

noreply@blogger.com (César Sánchez) — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 20:25:00 +0000

New York City, 1949. During the last three years, Elizabeth Hazen had been isolating hundreds of microbes from dirt samples taken at different locations. Many microbiologists at the time were following a path open by Alexander Fleming, Selman Waksman and others, who discovered that some soil microbes produced certain substances—antibiotics—with powerful activities against bacteria. However, rather than looking for a new agent against prokaryotic microbes, Elizabeth searched for a medicine to fight fungal infections. For this purpose, she grew the soil microbes and tested the cultures against...

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